Ratings Are Down

S&P Ratings Services placed its ratings on 33 tranches with a total issuance amount of $1.76B from eight U.S. cash flow and hybrid collateralized debt obligation of asset-backed securities (CDO of ABS) transactions on CreditWatch with negative implications.

All of the affected CDO transactions have exposure to U.S. residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) backed by first-lien subprime mortgage collateral.

Standard & Poor's Ratings Services also placed Radian Group Inc's A & AA counterparty credit rating on negative watch. That is to say the raters put a mortgage insurance company on watch.

MGIC and Radian said they could be forced to write down the entire value of a subprime credit joint venture the companies co-own.

The assets valued at $516 million and $518 million, respectively, were loans made to C-BASS, whose full name is Credit-Based Asset Servicing and Securitization LLC.

MGIC, which agreed in February to acquire Radian in a $5.47 B deal, is now attempting to back out.

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